I guess I don’t understand the people who are worried about their kids with excellent apps that include test scores. Most schools are test optional, not test blind. Schools will see the score and consider it. If someone is admitted without a score and your student is not then they maybe presented an overall better fit application. No two apps are exactly the same. Even coming from the same school, it’s unlikely that two students have exactly the same transcript and then they will have different ECs, essays, and recommendations.
Will a student with a “lesser” transcript but submitting a high score be denied and then a student with a higher GPA without a test score be admitted? Maybe. At tippy top schools, they want to see tippy top everything so a high score doesn’t always boost a GPA that’s not what they want to see.
I think the big thing is the uncertainty like has already been mentioned. Some colleges might admit a larger percent of TO applicants because they are comfortable with their AOs reading those apps. Other schools maybe are not as prepared to evaluate TO and maybe admit fewer TO applicants. The thing is that I don’t think GCs and parents know which schools are which and that leads to a lot of angst when deciding where to apply.
While test scores may not reflect any one student’s academic ability accurately, in the aggregate over thousands of students, they will reflect a relative academic level to which professors teach. A school with average SAT scores of 1550 has a different type of learner than those with an average score of 1350, and courses are adjusted accordingly, particularly in STEM subjects.
I expect there will a much greater disparity between the level at which some courses are taught and the academic level of the students enrolled next year. Some students will struggle more, some will drop out, but most will survive or change majors.
I think in the past for the T20 submitting scores just had to hit a threshold, if the applicant, for example, was over their 25 percentile of scores, then keep going . Anyone that had a low test score , I would assume social/economic factors were looked at. There are plenty of 1600/36 that get rejected from these schools. For schools that have TO for a while in T50, it has been shown that once the students arrive, their success is not correlated to whether they submitted test scores or not.
If I was an AO of course I look at GPA/Rigor and in the context of the HS of where the student comes from, but once again, for T20 how many have low GPA’s. So the factors that I believe are important are essays, meaningful EC’s, and recommendations that “Stand out”.
It took my daughter 4 times to get a decent score on the ACT. She is processing speed issues . Yes, while in college she has gotten accommodations. Also her major is more towards paper writing than exams. She is graduating this week with a 3.4. Her UW GPA was a mix of A’s and B’s. What got her admitted to what I considered her “reach” schools was her essays and EC’s and had a LOR from a college professor for her Duel enrollment class.
Now my son did extremely well on the SAT, and aced the AP tests, and only got a few B’s because sometimes he “did not turn in work”. His essay was ok, and I am sure that his LOR stated how smart he was, his EC’s were limited. a T20 or even a T50 though likely would not admit him. He is also doing extremely well where he is.
Bottom line is that the SAT/ACT is no longer what it was back when I was a applying. Getting a 800 was near impossible. Due to ACT the SAT has been “watered down” to the point that does it tell these colleges anything? Also I dont believe before Covid that they really meant a whole lot besides being a baseline for admissions. Now those kids who would not have met this baseline, but would be successful are applying.
I don’t know. Do we really think AOs are accepting TO kids who then can’t do the work? They have school profiles to look at to figure out the rigor of the high school and where the student fits. At least, at our high school, our profile paints a very good picture of the school. You can see ACT scores broken down in the class (they used 2020 kids this year since this year is wacky). For example, something like 120 kids out of 700 scored between a 34-36. If you have a TO candidate who you can see is in top ten percent of the class, you can maybe assume they would have scored like that in a normal year. The profile shows 89% of kids go to four year college. Things like that help the AOs choose TO kids wisely and not choose kids who would struggle.
I don’t think standardized tests were ever fair but for better or worse, they have been used as a benchmark by most colleges and universities for a long time. Students knew that and planned accordingly. And for certain schools, the need to score high posed an impossible hurdle.
And then the rules changed abruptly for public health reasons and introduced a lot of unpredictability in the system. And here we are and applications have surged at the most elite schools. For every kid who worked hard and managed to take the test and get a good score, there’s another who didn’t like their scores and chose not to report, and yet another who couldn’t test at all.
A compromise position (had colleges and universities had ample time to decide) might have been a modification of the requirement that some elite schools used to impose - that the entire test history be sent. Perhaps to make it more fair, request all scores from junior year onwards so an outlier test taken earlier in HS does not cause a problem. In this scenario, if a student couldn’t test through no fault of their own, they aren’t penalized. There’s simply nothing to report. But if they tested, then they report all scores. Of course this isn’t perfect either - if a student wasn’t reaching their target score in practice tests, they might not bother to take the real test. There’s no system that can’t be gamed to some extent. But it might reconcile some of the diverse views that have been expressed upthread.
Is that necessarily true, particularly at the colleges that have been recent ranking climbers?
Also, wouldn’t it be likely that rigor variation is greater in many non-STEM subjects, because of the less sequenced nature of prerequisites? Also, the T (engineering technology) and E (engineering) in STEM are subject to external accreditation with fairly high standards (ABET TAC and ABET EAC respectively), so the range of rigor variation is narrowed in those subjects (by effectively cutting off the bottom end).
Anyone with children at schools of different academic tiers can tell you that the courses often do not remotely resemble the same course at other colleges. Math at Caltech, physics at Princeton, econ at Chicago-all are taught at a very different level than at other fine but not elite schools, even at the most introductory level. Easier to overlook the differences in certain fields ( like sociology)
I expected outlier colleges like Caltech to be named, but (for example) math at Caltech is also more rigorous than math at other elite colleges with top end SAT/ACT scores.
But, for those students who go to colleges other than the outlier most selective ones, how about more realistic comparisons? For example, economics at UC Santa Cruz versus Penn State versus Florida State.
Exactly. I would think a kid who does well over the course of their 4 high school years and has a transcript to show their work ethic over those years would weigh much higher then a kid who rests well on one 4 hour test.
I do know not all courses or As are created equal. Some schools basically give kids a greater chance at getting As than others. So I do think test scores were able to reflect that for the school as a whole.
That said, I also believe those tests were more beneficial for kids who have the money and/or ability to do test prep which creates a huge disparity between kids from different backgrounds and for that reason I think it’s time for them to go. I say this as a mom of two kids who are good and great test takers. But the unfairness of those tests is well documented.
It sucks because my son did do a lot of prep because it was the rule he had to take him. We managed to get one in by driving out of state. Will it hurt him or help him that schools went TO? I guess time will tell. But either way there isn’t a whole lot he can do about it now.
@Data10 I totally agree! I believe that the all of the 4.0 + students that normally would be be discouraged from applying because of less than stellar SATs or ACTs aren’t be discouraged this year. I remember when my son was waiting on his SAT scores, he was looking at different schools where he could apply based on what those scores ended up being. He’s a math nerd that way.
If we all agree that TO affects college admissions, then it seems to me that we have to agree, logically, that it will impact college education as well. The colleges would have to either accommodate academically those students who wouldn’t have been admitted otherwise, or deal with other consequences that may result.
TO helped my D as she really isn’t a good standardized test taker. 10-10 in acceptances thus far with some generous aid from a few schools. Believe submitting scores would have significantly decreased awards and acceptances.
The 3 public schools you cite, ucbalumnus, have similar test scores and similar student bodies, so I expect the courses there are all taught at roughly the same academic level. That doesn’t bear on whether a student with test scores very substantially below the mean at their school, anywhere, will struggle mightily.
My daughter’s test scores were a good bit below the average for her school- she jokes she feels bad she drug down their averages, actually- but she has a 4.0 and doesn’t struggle with their academics in the least. Test scores are the not measure of a student imo.
again, you can tell if there’s grade inflation by looking at a good school profile. If the whole top decile of the class has all As in all honors/AP classes, then I would question the gpa a bit. I think high schools can do a disservice to their students if they don’t have a thorough profile. Leaving AOs guessing does not help the student’s cause.
I have been a higher education administrator for over 20 years (overseeing admissions and student affairs ) and test optional has been in the works for years. While I can understand parents perspectives on test-taking and standardized tests being the barometer for fairness in admissions practices, unfortunately, that is not the case. There have been numerous studies on the predictive success of students based on a standardized test and what we have found is that a high score has no bearing on college success. Analytics will tell you that a better predictor of student success is greatly tied to high school curriculum rigor, GPA, and other holistic factors detailed in the application.
While test optional was necessary this year due to the pandemic, many schools were already researching the merits of this process long before we ever heard the word COVID. For those who were suddenly thrust into this new market, they may find benefits that support continuation for years to come. We as parents, and society as a whole, will need to adjust our mind-set.
Why? Again, if a student is accepted to a rigorous tippy top college, they aren’t squeaking through with some inflated As and a few ok recommendations. They are still the kids who can do the work. I think we should give AOs some credit that they can find the kids who can do the work.
There are so many good points made upthread. Testing is just one of the many data points in holistic admissions. It is natural for parents of high scoring students to want test scores to be considered in admissions, just as it is natural for parents of low scoring students to prefer test scores not be considered in admissions. In the long-term, schools will adapt to test optional admissions. In the near-term there will likely be some issues.
One concern I have is that many schools were not test optional until this year, so they have no experience evaluating candidates without having test scores as a data point. They will make mistakes and admit students who cannot do the work, but those students will likely be the exception rather than the rule. Some schools, such as Denison, have been test optional for years. They have had the benefit of time to perfect the test optional admissions process and will likely not have to make any changes to their process this year.